I am working on a pet project of making a useable, modern, and most importantly pretty E17 Desktop. My current build is built on top of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. A summary of it can be found here and you can find a torrent download for the Live/installable DVD here.

I am looking for input on what people think of my little Live disc - issues you come across etc.

Regards,~Jeff

Last edited by Jeff91 on Thu Oct 21, 2010 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

What do the Ubuntu forums say so far, since it is a Ubuntu derivative project, by yourself, of course..

I can't really tell yet, maybe I have a bad screen, but I prefer a relatively clean screen as the default login/1st desktop presented--the stuff on the left side, performance monitoring, I wouldn't want as the first screen, unless I chose to place it there

Also, even though OSS projects and Linux distributions based on them, are mostly OSS mode, it doesn't hurt to contact the upstream distributors and make sure you are not stepping on their toes by pulling in their specific distribution applications. They do have an image/reputation to uphold, even as they provide their products for free

The example might be their menu programs, or package managers or repository controls

I can't really tell yet, maybe I have a bad screen, but I prefer a relatively clean screen as the default login/1st desktop presented--the stuff on the left side, performance monitoring, I wouldn't want as the first screen, unless I chose to place it there

The example might be their menu programs, or package managers or repository controls

Not sure what you mean by performance monitoring, I have nothing of the sort on the default desktop (did you even load the disc or look at screen shots?) and the only thing down the left side of the screen are mounted partitions/discs (just like Gnome has)

My default desktop:

And what distribution specific applications are you talking about? Everything I use is pretty Linux general other than the Mint update manager (which is now un-branded and free for everyone to use).

Sorry, I'm just a bit confused by your statements that do not seem to make much sense...

Looks pretty cool to me! I don't see anything wrong in the screen shot and many have expressed interest in e-17. I would like to have a look at this this weekend when I have some free time. Keep up the good work!

Edit: All you folks interested in e-17, give Jeff a hand and give him some feedback on this.

You are doing something very good. And is even better that you are enjoying while doing it! I always have a soft spot for E. Can you let me know if it is lighter than unity17 in terms of battery usage?

E17 is supposed to be lighter than xfce etc., but I tried unity17 on the laptop (Celeron 2GHz, 384 mb RAM) and while it is not slow it eats a lot of my battery. At the same time full-blown SimplyMepis with KDE4 no-less is slower but gives me more battery life. The difference (after tweaking both) is the special compositing effects that E17 was using in unity17. However, even macpup was eating my battery crazy. Now I think that it is not E17's fault but the distros. So, I would definately try your distro if its light in that department...

I can't compare it to unity, but I had Linux Mint 9 (gnome) on my netbook before I installed my E17 disc and the battery did not change at all between the two. I use the Gnome Power manager in the distro, so odds are this is why.

Anywho, I just posted my "beta" release of the distro. Meaning I finalized what packages are going to be pre-included and the configuration should be static from this point forward. Baring a slew of bugs this should be one of my last releases - been using it on my netbook (a system I use daily about 4-5 hours) for the last three days without issue.

Thanx for answering.I checked your distro out through other forums and websites. Looks interesting. What kind of file manager are you using? Thunar? I think it is using Raleigh theme or something. Any way of changing it to more eye pleasing theme? Just like in Elive.

Yes they are. While I love E17, I recognize the fact that it is pre-alpha software. Meaning while it does all work, it is not quite as functional as other alternatives in some cases. As such I have included gtk/gnome tool sets to perform tasks in which I feel e17 is lacking currently. Such as in the file manager.

I am currently trying some other E17 spins, like Sabayon E17, E17PCLinuxOS, etc. Because I actually want to have the default manager. And also, because Ubuntu puts lots of unnecessary stuff on the system, that would make my laptop to slow down. So I need a lean E17 spin. Maybe Arch with E17...

But, I respect your decisions and preferences. Keep up the good work! I might try it.

utsuwa wrote:Jeff,Laptop is 384MB RAM. I am spoiled by lightweight distros, so using 256MB RAM is already pushing it for me. By the way - is it on idle? Or do you watch a movie, or browse with firefox/chromium?

The system uses about 100megs of RAM at start-up. I recommend 256megs so you can run applications without much drag on top of this.

Thank you for the information, Jeff. I am currently fiddling with Arch+E17. E17PCLinuxOS was good, but have some annoying stuff like file manager not remembering my preferences in the toolbar. And its wifi icon in the systray looks out of place.

Thanx. I installed it. Actually it has just one dependency (mind you it is Arch we are talking about, so...). It was easy to install, but now I am wondering how to get more themes. I have only Raleigh. And I don't even know about the names of the others. I remember Mist and some others, but that is not their "package" name.